Addendum to Libraries as a Safe Space

  I'm not sure that I got my point across before, and I'd rather use someone who is better with words. My belief in empathy is best said by these two authors.

John Green in Paper Towns, using Woody Guthrie as a starting point: Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else[...] But imagining being someone else is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.


Kurt Vonnegut: But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.